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The use of good-quality data to inform decision making is entirely dependent on robust processes to ensure it is fit for purpose. Such processes vary between organisations, and between those tasked with designing and following them. In this article we report on a survey of 53 data analysts from many industry sectors, 24 of whom also participated in in-depth interviews, about computational and visual methods for characterizing data and investigating data quality. The paper makes contributions in two key areas. The first is to data science fundamentals, because our lists of data profiling tasks and visualization techniques are more comprehensive than those published elsewhere. The second concerns the application question "what does good profiling look like to those who routinely perform it?", which we answer by highlighting the diversity of profiling tasks, unusual practice and exemplars of visualization, and recommendations about formalizing processes and creating rulebooks.

Introduction: The clinical assessment of mobility, and walking specifically, is still mainly based on functional tests that lack ecological validity. Thanks to inertial measurement units (IMUs), gait analysis is shifting to unsupervised monitoring in naturalistic and unconstrained settings. However, the extraction of clinically relevant gait parameters from IMU data often depends on heuristics-based algorithms that rely on empirically determined thresholds. These were mainly validated on small cohorts in supervised settings., Methods: Here, a deep learning (DL) algorithm was developed and validated for gait event detection in a heterogeneous population of different mobility-limiting disease cohorts and a cohort of healthy adults. Participants wore pressure insoles and IMUs on both feet for 2.5 h in their habitual environment. The raw accelerometer and gyroscope data from both feet were used as input to a deep convolutional neural network, while reference timings for gait events were based on the combined IMU and pressure insoles data., Results and Discussion: The results showed a high-detection performance for initial contacts (ICs) (recall: 98%, precision: 96%) and final contacts (FCs) (recall: 99%, precision: 94%) and a maximum median time error of -0.02 s for ICs and 0.03 s for FCs. Subsequently derived temporal gait parameters were in good agreement with a pressure insoles-based reference with a maximum mean difference of 0.07, -0.07, and <0.01 s for stance, swing, and stride time, respectively. Thus, the DL algorithm is considered successful in detecting gait events in ecologically valid environments across different mobility-limiting diseases., Competing Interests: AM and FK are employees of, and may hold stock in, Novartis. BE reports consulting activities with, Siemens AG, Siemens Healthineers AG, WS Audiology GmbH outside of the study. He is a shareholder in Portabiles HealthCare Technologies GmbH. In addition, BE holds a patent related to gait assessment. MF is an employee of Grünenthal. LP and LC are co-founders and own shares of mHealth Technologies (https://mhealthtechnologies.it/). LS and CB are consultants of Philips Healthcare, Bosch Healthcare, Eli Lilly, and Gait Up. JH reports having submitted a patent for assessment of mobility using wearable sensors in Parkinson's disease. The intellectual property rights are held by the Tel Aviv Medical Center. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Romijnders, Salis, Hansen, Küderle, Paraschiv-Ionescu, Cereatti, Alcock, Aminian, Becker, Bertuletti, Bonci, Brown, Buckley, Cantu, Carsin, Caruso, Caulfield, Chiari, D'Ascanio, Del Din, Eskofier, Fernstad, Fröhlich, Garcia Aymerich, Gazit, Hausdorff, Hiden, Hume, Keogh, Kirk, Kluge, Koch, Mazzà, Megaritis, Micó-Amigo, Müller, Palmerini, Rochester, Schwickert, Scott, Sharrack, Singleton, Soltani, Ullrich, Vereijken, Vogiatzis, Yarnall, Schmidt and Maetzler.)

This article contributes a novel visualization method, Missingness Glyph, for analysis and exploration of missing values in data. Missing values are a common challenge in most data generating domains and may cause a range of analysis issues. Missingness in data may indicate potential problems in data collection and pre-processing, or highlight important data characteristics. While the development and improvement of statistical methods for dealing with missing data is a research area in its own right, mainly focussing on replacing missing values with estimated values, considerably less focus has been put on visualization of missing values. Nonetheless, visualization and explorative analysis has great potential to support understanding of missingness in data, and to enable gaining of novel insights into patterns of missingness in a way that statistical methods are unable to. The Missingness Glyph supports identification of relevant missingness patterns in data, and is evaluated and compared to two other visualization methods in context of the missingness patterns. The results are promising and confirms that the Missingness Glyph in several cases perform better than the alternative visualization methods.

The development of the preterm gut microbiome is important for immediate and longer-term health following birth. We aimed to determine if modifications to the preterm gut on the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) impacted the gut microbiota and metabolome long-term. Stool samples were collected from 29 infants ages 1-3 years post discharge (PD) from a single NICU. Additional NICU samples were included from 14/29 infants. Being diagnosed with disease or receiving increased antibiotics while on the NICU did not significantly impact the microbiome PD. Significant decreases in common NICU organisms including K. oxytoca and E. faecalis and increases in common adult organisms including Akkermansia sp., Blautia sp., and Bacteroides sp. and significantly different Shannon diversity was shown between NICU and PD samples. The metabolome increased in complexity, but while PD samples had unique bacterial profiles we observed comparable metabolomic profiles. The preterm gut microbiome is able to develop complexity comparable to healthy term infants despite limited environmental exposures, high levels of antibiotic administration, and of the presence of serious disease. Further work is needed to establish the direct effect of weaning as a key event in promoting future gut health.

The human foot provides an ideal environment for the colonization and growth of bacteria and subsequently is a body site associated with the liberation of odour. This study aimed to enumerate and spatially map bacterial populations' resident across the foot to understand any association with odour production. Culture-based analysis confirmed that Staphylococci were present in higher numbers than aerobic corynebacteria and Gram-positive aerobic cocci, with all species being present at much higher levels on the plantar sites compared to dorsal sites. Microbiomic analysis supported these findings demonstrating that Staphylococcus spp. were dominant across different foot sites and comprised almost the entire bacterial population on the plantar surface. The levels of volatile fatty acids, including the key foot odour compound isovaleric acid, that contribute to foot odour were significantly increased at the plantar skin site compared to the dorsal surface. The fact that isovaleric acid was not detected on the dorsal surface but was present on the plantar surface is probably attributable to the high numbers of Staphylococcus spp. residing at this site. Variations in the spatial distribution of these microbes appear to be responsible for the localized production of odour across the foot., (© FEMS 2014. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)